Schmidt to Sell Google Stake Worth $2.5 Billion

2/11/2013 3:50PM

Google Chairman Eric Schmidt plans to sell stock valued at $2.5 billion over the next year as part of a trading plan that would cut his stake in the Internet company by more than 40%. Scott Thurm joins digits. Photo: AP Images.

This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.

... I ... Schmidt to Sell Stake led to the hop billion dollars worth of Google's stock ... will discuss why that can be bearish for the stock on all and mall ... right here right now on Digits good afternoon and welcome ... I'm Simon Constable ... while beginning of ... the West Coast when school ... aam is standing by for us is written up around two to ... Eric Schmidt went to ... some of the destock Thanksgiving mascot ... thank you ... so ... so Wolf a lot of clients told Saddam pride ... it is I mean that your trip Elliott obviously gets a headline as the dollar's involve the ... the casing were interesting fact here is is forty more than forty percent of ... how much I Eric Schmidt still owns approval and that ... that's potentially more interesting here is that you know he's really ... on ... the interstate series can reduces Stake pre significantly over the next year ... on a sortie he already sold from over one billion of some still within the last yet so this comes on on top of that ... getting out of fuel stop getting into cash or lease a new initially ... is this something that investors the guru should be concerned about ... well some are probably well I mean you saw the stock is down about one percent a little bit more than the market in ... on some investors tend to view executive sales is that as a bearish sign in ... taking investors know when the stock is pretty ... we are richly valued and it is this if the effective chairman ... on the selling then maybe the stock is heading lower by the ... euro member that you know over the tiny Soledad billion dollars worth of stock last year Google stock rose twenty or thirty percent ... so ... you know people who made the same bet last year we've been proved wrong ... you're getting rarer out this is although they'd just this close to filing on Friday they said in a filing in actually drawn up the planned back in November ... when Google shares were considerably lower and ... again if if ... if you were trying to time the market then he would of been ... on the wrong again so here we to the last two times ... he said that Dom ... he was going to sell some stock Fox or not higher not lower ... Joel actually meant that less bullish than if you if you bought at the country and if an epic of a contrary indicator yes it was a ton of money coming from the trial of the comedy so long now one of the things that the company spokesman saying is that that that this isn't ... about diversification of assets ... yet mean you know it's hard to know we're not getting inside these guys' heads but ... you know I year-ago era and before he did not for sale year ago the ninety nine whenever percent ... of Eric Schmidt's wealth was tied up in Google stock and so are some that were happening Gruebel ... with the market went down or something else happened I mean you know he was ... he was pretty expose there and he may just be ... you know try to spread around a little bit more that thing is he's ... clearly stepping back from ... you know sort of the more intimate day-to-day responsibility there he he stepped down as CEO back in two thousand Lebanese now an active chairman ... with the sales year after year seems like the sort of been a very slowly taking a ... few steps away from the company the lead for now a decade or so ... now won one of things that ... some investors will look and say lucky he sold over one billion dollars with this talk ... about last year that gives them some cash to live on last last more than a couple weeks what with Frank ... if the fall of the spot was going high at ... why would he sell he'd be probably one with a ... he I mean again without getting inside his head it's hard to know the answer that except for the ... week you may not just wanna bear the risk of having everything tied up in a single asset rated ... so we are all sorts of things can happen to Google stock that he had ... we have no way of of being able to anticipate ... and you know even if you're just trying to ... diversify into stocks and bonds may be he wants ... to put more money into bonds and less money in stocks and thinks stocks or stocks in general are VeriFone saying nothing about ... of who rules her perform relative to the rest the market I mean ... it's impossible to know without ... asking him personally but ... now back to the point you're raising of the very reasons why some people ... sell the stock when they see news like this